Nabinger started to feel like he was getting off base, but he read further. The fall of the true line of man — the Atlanteans or Thulians — had come about because they had mated with lesser beings. Voila, the master race needed purity, which also worked quite well into the master-race theory of the Nazis.
So the Nazis had been interested in Atlantis? What did that have to do with Egypt? He sat back in the chair and closed his eyes. Unsettling thoughts floated through his brain as he reviewed what he knew and what he had just learned. Why had the Nazis destroyed the book and what had happened to Sebottendorff? There didn’t appear to be any direct connection here with Kaji’s story other than the word Thule inscribed on the dagger, but Nabinger was used to having to dig intellectually as well as in the dirt. Perhaps there was more here than was readily apparent.
Nabinger opened his eyes and went back to the abstract on the book. Apparently the book had been destroyed and information about it suppressed because Hitler wanted people to think all his ideas had begun with him and were not borrowed from other sources.
Nabinger decided to press on for a bit along the present avenue of research. A search on Atlantis brought a large number of references — over three thousand. Obviously the Germans had not been alone in their interest. Nabinger searched the titles until he found one that seemed to give an overview of the history of the fabled continent.
Atlantis was often regarded as a myth mentioned in original source only by Plato. Most historians thought Plato had made the tale of Atlantis up to stress a point and that it was only a literary tool. For those who did think it represented an actual place, the fingers pointed to various locations. Some believe it to be the island of Thera in the Mediterranean, which was destroyed by a volcanic eruption. The crater of the volcano Santorini had been investigated by leading oceanographers, searching for clues.
Others placed it in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The Azores were mentioned — the Lake of the Seven Cities on the island of Sao Miguel was a body of water in a volcanic crater. The main city of Atlantis was supposed to lie beneath that lake, or so the supporters of that site claimed.
Nabinger scanned down, skipping most of the middle of the article, looking to see what the latest theories were.
Recent discoveries of large stones closely fitted together off the islands of Bimini in the Bahamas had caused quite a bit of excitement several years previously and the enigma of their creation and location had never really been adequately explained. That struck a bell with Nabinger. A speaker at an archeological conference he had attended the previous year had been from Bimini and had spoken of the site. And, if he remembered rightly, there were high runes there, too, that couldn’t be deciphered.
Nabinger put his briefcase on the table next to the computer and dug through. He had a binder in there with information that he always carried with him when he went overseas to work. In the back were several pages of document protectors, each sized to hold twelve business cards.
He found the card of Helen Slater, the woman from Bimini who had spoken at the conference. He removed it and put it in his breast pocket.
Nabinger hit the F-3 key to print out the article and moved on to another article. This one described a nineteenth century American congressman, Ignatius Donnelly, who had published a book called Atlantis: The Antediluvian World, which had been a best-seller in its own time. Donnelly’s hypothesis was based on similarities between pre Columbian civilizations in America and Egypt. Nabinger felt like he was reading the beginning of his own unpublished paper on the high runes. Both cultures had had pyramids, embalming, a 365-day calendar, and a mythology about an ancient flood. Donnelly’s theories had been torn apart by scientists of his own day, which didn’t surprise Nabinger. The same connection had been made by people in this century and received the same chilly reception, which was the major reason Nabinger’s paper was still unpublished.
Done with that article, he decided to get back to what had led him here: the cross-reference with the Nazis and Atlantis. The Nazis had launched expeditions during World War II to the cold wastelands on both ends of the earth, in search of both Atlantis/Thule and relics such as the Holy Grail. And also to Central America, where there were pyramids, not quite as large or of the exact same design as those in Egypt, but with high runes also.
Nabinger stroked his beard. What had the Nazis found that had led them back to the Great Pyramid and to a chamber that had been undisturbed for over four thousand years? Had they broken the code on the runes and found out important information? Was there something written in these other locations about the pyramids? If Kaji’s story was true, at the very least they had found information that had told them of the lower chamber.
Nabinger cleared the screen and went back to the word search. He slowly typed in the name Kaji had given him:
Von Seeckt.
One hit. Nabinger accessed the article. It was a fifty-year anniversary article about the atomic bomb being dropped on Hiroshima. It detailed the development of the atomic bomb during World War II. Nabinger scanned down. Von Seeckt’s name was listed as one of the physicists who had worked on development and testing of the bomb.
But Von Seeckt had been with Germans, according to Kaji. How had he ended up in America in the middle of the war? And why had the Germans brought a nuclear physicist into the Great Pyramid? And, most importantly, what had Von Seeckt discovered and carried out of the lower chamber in 1942?
Nabinger’s fingers halted over the keyboard as something he had written earlier in the day came back to him.
He reached into his backpack and pulled out his sketchpad. He’d been working on the panels in the lower chamber that stood at the head of where the sarcophagus had once been. The partially deciphered rune text was there in penciclass="underline"
POWER SUN FORBIDDEN HOME PLACE (???) CHARIOT (???) NEVER AGAIN (???) DEATH TO ALL LIVING THINGS
Curses against interlopers in the monuments of ancient Egypt were not unknown. Did this curse relate to what Von Seeckt had taken out of the pyramid? And why had the Allies hidden all record of the invasion of the pyramid and the discovery of the lower chamber? It had to be something much more important than some simple archeological find.
There was a way to find out. The end of the article stated that Von Seeckt was still alive and living in Las Vegas.
Nabinger turned off the computer and stood. Budget be damned, there was a mystery here, and he was the only one who was on its trail. He left the university library and walked into the nearest travel agency to book a return flight to the States that evening, with one stop en route to see Slater in Bimini.
Once he knew when he would be arriving, he rang through the long-distance operator to information in Nevada. There was a Werner Von Seeckt listed and Nabinger copied down the number. After he’d dialed it, he found himself talking to voice mail. As the beep sounded, Nabinger quickly composed his message: “Professor Von Seeckt, my name is Peter Nabinger. I work with the Egyptology Department at the Brooklyn Museum. I would like to talk to you about the Great Pyramid, which I believe we have a mutual interest in. I just deciphered some of the writing in the lower chamber, which I believe you visited once upon a time and it says: Power, sun. Forbidden. Home place, chariot, never again. Death to all living things. Perhaps you could help shed some light on my translation. Leave me a message how I can get hold of you at my voice-mail box,” and Nabinger left his number.
CHAPTER 5
“About a year, give or take six months, without treatment. With treatment you can add perhaps another half a year.”